The Treasured One

‘Who were they, then?’

‘As closely as I was able to determine, they were Trogites, and they wanted to talk to your people about their gods. How much were you able to discover about somebody called Amar?’

‘Not too much, big brother,’ Veltan replied. ‘Narasan has nothing but contempt for the clergy of the Amarite faith.’

‘He’s not alone there, Veltan,’ Keselo said. ‘Anyone in the Trogite Empire with the least bit of decency or intelligence despises the Amarite church. The clergy is corrupt, greedy beyond belief, and totally without honor. It’s common knowledge that the “church” is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own.’

‘That has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?’ Zelana observed. ‘Our dear sister has a priesthood that behaves in much the same way’

I shrugged. ‘It makes her happy, I suppose.’ I looked at Veltan. ‘Where’s the rest of Narasan’s army?’ I asked. ‘If I understood correctly, the men he brought to Lattash were just an advance force.’

‘The bulk of Narasan’s army’s still in the port of Castano on the north shore of the Empire. Why do you ask, big brother?’

‘The second invasion in Ashad’s dream almost bad to involve Trogites, since this “Amar” is a Trogite invention.’

‘That’s true, I suppose,’ Veltan conceded. ‘Where are we going with this, Dahlaine?’

I looked inquiringly at Keselo. ‘I gather that most of the men in Narasan’s army share your feelings about this so-called religion,’ I suggested. ‘Is it at all possible that some of them feel differently, but they’re keeping it to themselves?’

‘Not after what happened in the southern part of the empire last year,’ he replied. ‘We lost twelve cohorts as a direct result of a deception that we tracked back to a high-ranking clergyman in the Amarite church. That’s why Commander Narasan threw his sword away and went into business as a beggar. If any man in the army even suggested that the Amarite church had anything even remotely resembling decency, his comrades would kick the living daylights out of him.’

‘Let’s not dismiss the possibility entirely, Keselo,’ Veltan said with a troubled look on his face. ‘From what I’ve heard, the word “gold” sends the Amarite church into a feeding frenzy, and if I remember correctly, there was some extended discussion of gold in the army compound back in Kaldacin. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that some soldier in your army happened to visit a tavern in Castano, and the word “gold” came up during a casual conversation, and somebody affiliated with the Amarite Church happened to overhear the conversation. Wouldn’t that sort of explain the second invasion in Ashad’s dream?’

‘It doesn’t really fit,’ Keselo disagreed. ‘The Amarite church might want to come here to the Land of Dhrall to harvest gold and slaves, but they’d need to know exactly how to get through all that floating ice, and Gunda and Padan have the only maps.’

‘That’s true, I suppose,’ Veltan conceded, ‘but Narasan told me that he could field a hundred thousand soldiers. It’d only take one opportunist to blow away any chance of secrecy. I think that’s the answer to the origins of that second invasion in your little boy’s dream, Dahlaine.’

‘It would explain it, I guess,’ I agreed. Then I looked at Keselo again. ‘Just exactly what are “slaves”?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word before.’

‘You’ve been very lucky, then. It was a fairly standard custom back in the early days of the Empire for the Imperial armies to capture people of more primitive cultures and then sell them to the landowners of the Empire itself, almost as if they were cattle. Then the landowners would hire men with whips to drive the unfortunates to do the actual farming. The practice fell into disuse a hundred or so years ago, but a few decades back the Church realized the she’d been passing up a wonderful opportunity to make money, so the slavers are back in business again, and at least half of them are members of the clergy.’

Veltan’s face went dead white. ‘If those monsters even come close to the shores of my Domain, I’ll destroy them!’

‘No, Veltan,’ I told him quite firmly, ‘you won’t. Killing anything is absolutely forbidden, and you know it. If you tried something like that, you’d be banished forever, and it wouldn’t be to the moon this time. You’d spend the rest of eternity in a place of absolute darkness where the only sounds you’d hear would be your own screams of endless despair. I’m sure we’ll be able to find some suitable alternatives, but if you even try to kill anything, I’ll tie you up in a knot so tight that it’ll take you about four cycles just to unlace your fingers from your toes.’

‘So that’s why you people had to rush around hiring armies!’ Keselo exclaimed. ‘I’ve never really understood why you didn’t just obliterate the enemies with a wave of your hand. It was because you’re not permitted to kill anything, isn’t it?’

‘I want you to forget what you just heard, young man,’ I told him firmly. ‘Do you understand me?’

‘Why, yes, I believe I do.’

‘Good.’ I looked over at my brother, ‘You’d better tell Narasan to start moving his fleet, Veltan,’ I suggested. ‘We’ve finished everything here in Zelana’s Domain, so it’s time to move on. Ashad’s dream wasn’t too specific about time. That seems to be one of the characteristics of these dreams. Our Dreamers can give us all kinds of details about what’s going to happen, but “when” always seems a little vague.’

‘Did Ashad happen to mention where the main battle’s likely to take place?’ Veltan asked.

‘He said that it would be in the general vicinity of the Falls of Vash, little brother. He wasn’t too specific, and I didn’t want to push him.’

Veltan winced. ‘That’s very rugged country up there, big brother. I don’t think the Trogites will like the idea of fighting on ground like that.’

‘It can’t be much worse than the ravine above Lattash was, can it?’ Zelana asked.

‘It makes that ravine look like a gentle meadow, sister mine,’ Veltan replied glumly. ‘It wasn’t even there at the end of my last cycle. When I woke up, the man-things of my Domain seemed to be very excited about it. I’m not sure exactly why Vash created the falls, but they are spectacular to look at. Looking is one thing, but walking around up there’s something entirely different. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Yaltar’s twin volcanos are an outgrowth of what he’d done when his name was Vash. The river that tumbles over the falls originates in a geyser that spouts up about a hundred feet into the air, and that’s got a fairly strong odor of earthquakes and eruptions. There’s a fault line just south of that geyser, and it left a sheer face about two hundred feet high a mile or so downstream from the geyser. With all that water tumbling over the edge, it’s impossible to climb up that cliff, so anybody who wants to get up there has to take a different route.’ Veltan stopped and suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘I should have known that this was coming!’ he exclaimed. ‘Last spring Omago told me that some strangers had been asking questions about the Falls of Vash. I had my mind on other things at the time, so I didn’t pursue it. Evidently, the Vlagh’s been sending scouts out into our Domains for quite a while now.’